Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Wide Sargasso Sea, "Voice of the subaltern", Daniel + Amelie,…
Wide Sargasso Sea
Context:
revision/response to figure of mad woman in the attic in Jane Eyre - European + West Indies are antagonists
-
-
2 narrators, 3 sections - first voice is Antoinette
-
1st section Caribbean woman, 2nd Mr Rochester - brudy/difficult/rich man
-
-
novel set in 1839
-
phase where slaves continued to work in same places, were meant to be paid - apprenticeships on a trade with an interim period
-
Jamaican history
-
-
creole culture - migrants created new social order, African influences survived in opposition to slave system
miscegenation - sexual relations between black and coloured women and white men were widespread, common and accepted by plantation leads as part of the society - became main colonial differentiator - mixed people being associated with racial degeneracy
-
planter goals - political career, to make money w/ steady income, didnt improve plantations ineffiency
economic context
-
british anti-slavery, shift in capitalist nature, but also US independence, overproduction in plantation, slaves in empire reduced, made colonial lobby weaker
-
-
post emancipation period
-
less women in plantations - some benefits for them - increase birth rate and reproduction of slave population
-
-
-
Jean Rhys
-
England views her as "British woman writer" that encapsulates England after Victoria + before Hitler
-
-
-
a white planter, born in the West Indies
Analysis, Characters, Themes:
-
-
Bermuda Triangle, where things disappear - captures sailors, like the characters in the novel are trapped in the waters
image of the sea as expansive demonstrates physical distance of where she ends up but also distance + differences between husband + wife
Sargasso - seaweed floating on the surface - threatening look or something beautiful , can grow into very large areas, covering the water, isn't transparent - something lurking underneath
Sargasso seaweed also represents Antoinette in the eyes of Rochester - she is an other and the problem is he cannot read her, an inability on his part - she is alien and too much for him
-
Antoinette
wants to see herself like Tia, an ex-slave, she is inbetween and not quite like it, wants to belong with rest of the crowd
her mother comes from Martinique, her father is English - the Cosways + Masons
"Antoinette Marionette" - Rochester wants to manipulate her, turn her into something else under his full control
side characters
ex-slaves, in no-mans land, they don’t belong anywhere, like zombies, living in between two worlds but no free world with full employment and payment and seen as freed people
Daniel - tries to appeal to Rochester - greed or necessity ? - capitalism emerging from violent, colonial and plantation foundation - more inequalities
"bad blood she have" -family tainted - sly voice, presenting himself as very Christian and good
Rochester
calls Antoinette Bertha - even though she is French, he is giving her an English name - domesticating her + shaping her into the logic of his own world
changing her personality + identity - mimics slave trade practices of changing names to make it more anglicised
has a need to control Antoinette, highlighting he is also being controlled by his father and family rather than being a full active agent
-
he is the 2nd son - doesn't inherit anything therefore needs to get his own money, buying and marrying someone w/ their own property - only in Caribbean
weakness - he represents a social structure + patriarchal that does not protect men, these men go and exploit other people - his father owns him, has to account to his father for everything
uncanny, sense of repetition - familiar + strange at the same time
Doubles
Anette + Antoinette - mental legacy of madness of mother, colonial anxiety about degeneracy
Tia and Antoinette - wants to be like Tia, ex-slave but belongs in local community, Antoinette is a white, privileged Creole planter - novel starts with that doubling
-
Rochester tries to see himself as double to his father - his father shapes his actions as he tries to embody and look up to him
-
Christophine
-
created debate in postcolonial fiction - Edward Said father of postcolonial theory - realist fiction develops in Europe in 19th C because "the power to narrate, or block other narratives from forming and emerging is a way of asserting cultural superiority"
minority/oppressed people presented as the “other” to create a certain presentation of them in the West, so western authors use them as the antagonists
speaks Patois, "incorrect" English
-
-
double of her and Anette - mother roles, from the same place
criticises political events like the apprenticeships, is brave + confronts Rochester on how he treats Antoinette
people afraid of her spells and magic - she has an independent strength that empowers her - magic is deeply rooted in her culture, represents knowledge of the "other" - it has power and isn't passive, a way to resist White/Western knowledge
Freud - Uncanny
something familiar that becomes strange and creepy that brings up fear originating from repressed feelings and thoughts
form of terror that leads back to something terrifying because it corresponds to something repressed that has returned
double becomes an image of terror, separating yourself from your bad self
white cockroaches, zombies + spells, re-naming, ghosts, marionettes, dolls
Fractured societies, imposed dichotomies, haunting identities
-
-
-
-
-
-
"She is Creole girl, and she have the sun in her. Tell the truth now. She don't come to your house in this place England they tell me about, she don't come to your beautiful house to beg you to marry with her. No, it's you come all the long way to her house-it's you beg her to marry. And she love you and she give you all she have. Now you say you don't love her and you break her up. What you do with her money, eh?" Her voice was still quiet but with a hiss in it when she said "money."
-
-